gniezno

The occasion was a celebration of the coronation of Bolesław I the Brave as 1st king of Poland (1024). There were lots of polish/slavish knights with real swords, spears and axes. Fortunately we have not told them we were germans -)

We located this extremely curious fair totally by incident. Besides a lot of medieval knights battling, there have been a lot musicians, dancers, artisans, herbalists, gunsmiths, saddlers, coopers, and many other ancient craftsmen. Afterwards, we noticed in the web there ended up even some witches, but we have not seen them.

————————————————–About Gniezno:
One of the Piasts’ chief cities, Gniezno was first mentioned by 10th century A.D. sources as the richesse of Piast Poland (in Dagome Iudex). Its Roman Catholic archbishop, the Archbishop of Gniezno, is the Primate of Poland. These historical facts make its place in Polish history similar to Canterbury in England or Rheims in France.

The tenth century Gniezno cathedral (on the foreground) witnessed royal coronations of Bolesław I in 1024 and his son Mieszko II Lambert in 1025. The cities of Gniezno and close by Poznań ended up captured, plundered and destroyed in 1038 by the Bohemian duke Bretislav I, which pushed the next Polish rulers to move the Polish funds to Kraków. The archiepiscopal cathedral was reconstructed by the following ruler, Boleslaus II the Generous, who was crowned king here in 1076.

Gniezno evolved as a regional seat of the eastern part of Greater Poland, and in 1238 municipal autonomy was granted by the duke Władysław Odonic. Gniezno was once again the coronation website in 1295 and 1300. Over the hundreds of years, it alternated polish, prussian, teutonic, bohemian, swedish, french and german (WWII) dominion, invasion or looting.